An Open Trial of 'Grief-Help': A Cognitive-Behavioural Treatment for Prolonged Grief in Children and Adolescents

摘要

In the past years, there is growing recognition of a syndrome of disturbed grief referred to as prolonged grief disorder (PGD). Although mostly studied in adults, clinically significant PGD symptoms have also been observed in children and adolescents. To date, no effective treatment for childhood PGD yet exists. We recently developed a nine-session cognitive-behavioural treatment for childhood PGD combined with five sessions of parental counselling. In the current article, we present outcomes of treatment of 10 consecutive children and adolescents turning to our university clinic with elevated PGD symptoms as their primary problem and main reason to seek therapy. Patients were significantly improved at post-treatment, with large improvements in self-rated PGD and post-traumatic stress (effect sizes>0.8) and small to moderate improvement in depression and parent-rated internalizing and externalizing problems (0.2